Friday Power Rankings: Re-watchable Movies

We've all been there. It's a lazy Sunday afternoon, maybe dinner is on the stove cooking, you don't really have anything to do. Football season is over. You sort through your DVR/Netflix queue...maybe you don't want to start down a binge-watch hole, or maybe your wife/significant other isn't home and you don't want to watch "your show" without her.

So you run through your channel guide, and BOOM! TNT, TBS, AMC, IFC, what have you has one of THOSE movies on.

You know, those movies you just can't help but watch. Not necessarily your favorite movie -- it may not even be an actual GOOD movie. But for whatever reason, you just have to watch it. Like stop what you're doing, veg out on the couch and watch it through. The movies that make you late to family functions because they come on while you're trying to put on pants.

Here are my top 10 re-watchable movies. They're not exactly in an order, but I believe them to be the finest in "watch because it's on" cinema.

1. Tombstone

"I'm your Huckleberry."

It is my belief that Val Kilmer should be honored by the Academy Awards in perpetuity for this role. Honestly, Tombstone is just the perfect combination of violence, badass bravado and mustaches. Also fits perfectly into a two-hour running time.

2. Top Gun

Let me tell you a story. In my single days, I once went out with a perfectly nice young lady who admitted to having never seen Top Gun (yet still knew several of the lines -- a true testament to this movie's ubiquity, if you ask me). Before our second date, I picked up a DVD copy out of the $5 bin at Walmart in lieu of flowers. There wasn't a third date, but I still believe the strategy was both sound and correct.

3. Rocky IV

On the short list of PEAK STALLONE films, and certainly the finest offering (if I expanded this list Cobra, Tango & Cash and Over the Top would all certainly make appearances). I mean for God's sake the man ended the Cold War. Are you not entertained?

4. Payback

Mel Gibson's most underrated film in my opinion. Prior to his meltdown in the late aughts, this movie was a real departure for Gibson, who just plays a bastard-coated-bastard with bastard filling in this and is still cool as hell. Plus some great character acting out of Gregg Henry, Kris Kristofferson, William Devane and of course, Bill Duke.

5. Predator

"...anytime."

Everybody quotes Jesse Ventura's Blaine, but give me MACK. We, as a country, do not have enough Bill Duke in our lives. This film is an American classic and I will fight the man who says otherwise.

6. John Wick

This is a movie that really sneaks up on you. It looks kind of like your standard "baddass gets revenge on awful people" type of movie, but Keanu Reeves just brings an amazing level of earnestness to the title character. All while basically still being at his peak Ted "Theodore" Logan-ness. He makes you believe that he is both the most-feared hitman of the Russian mob, yet still on a first-name basis with the bartenders, mechanics and cops in his city. Everybody just likes him, because who DOESN'T like Keanu Reeves?

7. Goodfellas

There's no law that says the movies have to be bad or cheesy or anything. Maybe Scorsese's finest work, and in my opinion the best gangster movie (yes, better than The Godfather) simply because it is unrelenting in its portrayal of exactly what types of people these are. You are never led to believe that Henry Hill, Jimmy Conway or Tommy DeVito are anything besides awful people.

8. Big

I can remember seeing this movie in the theaters as a kid, and it will always have a special place in my heart. I miss funny and child-like Tom Hanks.

9. Varsity Blues

The high school football movie that everybody REALLY wishes their high school football experience was like.

10. Torque

I hate to be the guy who enjoys a really bad movie (and make no mistake, this movie is a big ol' turd) ironically, but there are some times that I just can't help it. This movie was just so goddamned early 2000s, from the rap-rock crossovers (‘sup Ice Cube!) to the Matrix CGI affects to the blatant and somehow both self-aware and yet completely unaware plot rip-off of The Fast and the Furious, complete with metta throw-away lines. This movie was written by the kind of people that define irony like Alanis Morissette, and that's BEFORE we get to the plot, which features a major point of a motorcycle chain having an individual "fingerprint" and the main character riding his motorcycle onto a moving train at full speed.

All I'm saying is that if you're going to completely disregard all laws of physics, just light your junior high science book on fire. I don't mean the standard nerd tropes like "the Millenium Falcon making the Kessel Run would take years because light years are measures of time not distance." I mean as in the "I learned that motorcycles can't do things like that when I was still playing with Micromachines" understanding of how science works. Give Neil DeGrasse Tyson the finger and a Stone Cold Stunner, then shotgun a Red Bull over his beaten body. Wanted falls under this category as well. It is the piece of shit I have no choice but to admire in the bowl